Breaking: Mistrial Declared in New York Voter Fraud Trial

Looks like the circus that is the upstate voter fraud trial will be in town once more. After repeated declarations from the jury that they were hopelessly deadlocked, and amidst hope that they could come to some sort of partial verdict, Judge Pulver pulled the plug and declared a mistrial, ordering the case retried. After the jury had been dismissed, supporters of the two defendants, Michael LoPorto and Edward McDonough broke into celebration. How they could view a temporary reprieve as some sort of victory remains a mystery.

The loser in the case clearly is Troy politics in general, and the Democrat party. Make no mistake, despite today’s results, several Democrat operatives committed a littany of crimes.

A judge declared a mistrial Tuesday in the ballot fraud case against Rensselaer County Democratic Elections Commissioner Edward McDonough and former City Councilman Michael LoPorto.

Acting state Supreme Court Justice George Pulver dismissed the jury and ordered the case be retried.

The jury began deliberations March 2 and deliberated for approximately 40 hours. For days, jurors said they couldn’t reach a verdict, twice telling the judge they were deadlocked.

“The court concludes that the jury is hopelessly and genuinely deadlocked and that no purpose would be served requiring the jury to continue deliberations,” Pulver wrote in a decision announcing he was declaring a mistrial.

McDonough faced 38 counts of forgery and 36 counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument, both felonies.

It remains to be seen how prosecutor Trey Smith will proceed, and which charges he wants to bring against the pair, if any. For now it seems that the Democrats who have masterminded the voter fraud scheme were all given plea deals, exchanging testimony in this trial for a lone felony charge. Two other Democrats await their own trials.

Former City Clerk Bill McInerney, former Councilman John Brown and operatives Tony DiFiglio and Tony Renna all pled guilty to a felony each and testified on behalf of Smith.

Charges, including felonies, against two other Democrats, former Council President Clement Campana and Councilman Gary Galuski, remain outstanding.

How these deals were decided upon by Smith is anyone’s guess, but they are questionable to say the least. For instance, defense attorneys during the trial raised the question that Bill McInerney could have faced several hundred felony counts, but only had to plead to one.

Then there is the story of current Troy City Councilman, Kevin McGrath, who received his own immunity agreement. Details of the that agreement came out during testimony when McGrath admitted on the stand that he has gotten favorable treatment – meaning no prison time – for several alleged crimes, including a felony drug conviction.

In a June op-ed, former Democrat Party Chairman, Frank LaPosta, wrote:

Troy City Councilman Kevin McGrath, D-District 1, got the deal of a lifetime revealed in a recently disclosed cooperation agreement with the special prosecutor in the Troy voter fraud investigation. This agreement allows McGrath to avoid criminal prosecution for any wrongdoing on his part in the voter fraud scandal…

The people of District 1 and the city of Troy have a right to know why McGrath was given such favorable treatment to avoid criminal prosecution for acts he may have committed as part of the voter fraud scandal. These acts are very similar to what two individuals did who were in turn indicted by the same grand jury for multiple felony counts of alleged fraud and forgery. McGrath himself benefitted from the voter fraud in 2009 which allowed him to secure the Working Families party line on the ballot.

So while the McDonough and LoPorto families celebrate, at least 49 voters in Troy have had their vote stolen from them. Some of them were targeted specifically for their lesser knowledge on election procedures, such as the mentally disabled. Some of them were targeted for their lesser understanding of language and laws, such as immigrants. Some were targeted based on their income, such as college students who were actually paid for their vote.

All of them were targeted for one specific reason. Democrats thought they were infallible, and that theft of an election was a ‘normal political tactic’.

About the AuthorRusty Weiss

Rusty Weiss is a freelance journalist focusing on the conservative movement and its political agenda. He has been writing conservatively charged articles for several years in the upstate New York area, and his writings have appeared in the Daily Caller, American Thinker, FoxNews.com, Big Government, the Times Union, and the Troy Record. He is also Editor of one of the top conservative blogs of 2012, the Mental Recession.